Within the group, all of us are well educated, nonreligious, middle-to-upper-middle class, and progressive politically. Last year I joined a support group for parents of youth with rapid onset gender dysphoria. These changes are occurring regardless of whether the family is accepting of the child’s new identity. This includes extreme sensitivity to criticism, worsening anxiety and depression, and a complete withdrawal from the family. In reality, many of us are questioning it because we have seen drastic changes in our child’s personality after they declare a trans identity. Many people assume that parents who question their child’s trans identity are doing so because they don’t accept trans people. During the pandemic, my adult daughter declared herself transgender, and now my answer is more complicated. I would have said they deserve to be treated with respect and dignity and permitted whatever medical treatment they desire. Lynne’s perspective changed after her child transitioned:Ī few years ago, I’d have described transgender people as a small minority of men suffering from a rare and difficult dysphoria. What are schools supposed to do? Genital inspections? It’s madness to say that this ideal of “fairness” is so important that children’s genitals should potentially be inspected for the sake of protecting it. Cisgender women athletes have already come under fire for having too much natural testosterone, with titles even stripped away. Limiting people’s sports participation based on one trait that, while seemingly correlated with athletic performance, is in many ways irrelevant in a lot of trans people, does much more harm than goodFor example, it opens the question of how to check if an athlete is trans in the first place. Sports already select for those most fit to play them physically, be that the tallest or the ones with the most testosterone or the ones with the best relative wingspan. Many physical traits are an advantage, yes, but these differences exist anyway! It is unfair to say that a trans woman has an advantage simply by being trans because it makes her tall, only to turn around and say that Michael Phelps should be allowed to compete when he has a biological advantage much more relevant than the one that most trans women have. While the chromosomes remain different, they are not an advantage in sports. Many trans people have been treated medically for a long time and are in most ways indistinguishable from cisgender people. However, “biological sex” is not nearly as binary as people believe it to be. One is related to sports, where people often cry that “biological sex” is what matters and that fairness should trump all. As such, I’ve grown to have a lot of very strong opinions on this subject. One of my trans friends is moving away for their own safety. It feels like every day it becomes less safe for me to be trans in public.
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